Human, and other animal cells, are presently cultured in suitable nutrients such as culture media for hours or days for growth, in the case of embryos, and for reproduction purposes, in the case of stem cells.
The following relates to the growth culturing of individual embryos. There are several generally practiced embryo growth procedures which are presently in use. One such growth technique involves the use of a culturing container such as a Petrie dish in which individual embryos are placed in spaced-apart locations in the culturing dish. This technique involves the initial placement of individual embryos on a growth-enhancing nutrient, and subsequently immersing each of the individual embryos in a drop of a growth-enhancing nutrient, such as culture media. Several common media are HTF, Earl's salt solution and GLOBAL culture media. The individual specimens are kept separate from each other, can be individually identified, and separately examined. Thus, the advantage of this procedure is the ability to monitor each individual embryo throughout the growth period so that there is a degree of selectivity available at the uterine-implanting stage of the process. One drawback in using this procedure relates to the fact that embryonic growth seems to be improved when the several embryos are grown in a common droplet or vial of growth-enhancing nutrient and are thus able to share each other's growth induced byproducts and this procedure does not allow the transfer of nutrients or byproducts.
Another of the generally practiced embryo growth techniques involves clustering a plurality of embryos together on a Petrie dish and immersing the cluster with a common drop of the growth-enhancing nutrient, such as culture media. Using this technique, all of the embryos in a duster are exposed to the same growth-enhancing nutrient drop and are able to share that growth-enhancing nutrient and also share their respective byproducts of the growth process. The drawback with the second technique is that one cannot distinguish one embryo from another in the cluster, in other words, each individual embryo cannot be separately monitored during the growth process. Thus, the ability to select a preferred one of the grown embryos for implanting is somewhat impaired by use of the second growth technique.
A desirable supplement for the embryo growth media is one or more growth enhancers or hormones for providing increased embryo growth, or for supplying factors that may be missing from the specimen or from the culture media. Currently, the enhancers may be obtained through the use of natural or synthetic growth hormones or from the use of stem cells to produce or give off growth hormones.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,448,069 Cecchi et al describes the separation of embryos or other specimens using what could be described as picket fences to form separate specimen compartments in a media culturing dish. One problem that is not addressed by the '069 patent is the migration of the specimens due to their size and/or weight and the possibility of them moving between the compartments. Additionally, they may not be readily discernible in the compartments by reason of the shape or configuration of the floor of the compartments.
Current products used for similar purposes are made with walls that are as vertical as practical. They do not address the fact that the embryos may measure less than ninety microns in size. This makes finding the embryos difficult in the dishes and also makes it difficult to locate an embryo f it has attached itself to a wall at some distance upwardly from the floor of the dish. The problem that arises is that the embryo is now at a different focal plane when compared to the top of the wall and the floor of the dish, and therefore is difficult to locate.
Current products of this type do not include alignment indices, which will allow the user to establish an orientation of the apparatus for viewing purposes or for the possible use with a mechanized viewing or work system.
It would be highly desirable to provide an growing method and apparatus, which would provide the ability to segregate the individual specimens, one from another, allow the addition of items such as growth factors to the apparatus while also providing the ability to allow the segregated specimens to share a common growth-enhancing cell culture media, nutrients such as growth factors and share each other's growth byproducts. It would be also highly desirable to provide an apparatus that will allow the ease in monitoring and visibility of the specimens, while keeping the specimens from migrating between compartments. It would be highly desirable to provide an apparatus that makes locating the specimens, such as embryos easier and therefore saves time and effort.